Biplane Design Stops Sonic Booms

LiveScience (via nc links):

Biplanes once ruled the skies in the pioneering days of aviation and World War I. Now the old aircraft design could make a comeback in the silent supersonic jets of tomorrow.

A newer version of the biplane could reach supersonic cruising speeds without causing ear-splitting sonic booms, according to computer simulations by MIT and Stanford University researchers. They built upon the design of German engineer Adolf Busemann, who originally envisioned triangular wings connected at their tips.

"The sonic boom is really the shock waves created by the supersonic airplanes, propagated to the ground," Wang says. "It's like hearing gunfire. It's so annoying that supersonic jets were not allowed to fly over land."